“But that’s what I’m saying”: experiential versus institutional truth in guardian-minor interactions

Abstract Asylum interviews have come to resemble credibility inquiries into applicants’ stories. Their narratives are scrutinised and held against bureaucratic standards of ‘truth’. To meet these standards, applicants for international protection require support in uncovering and reorienting their lived stories into factual accounts. Although this support is typically provided by legal professionals, unaccompanied refugee minors may receive additional guidance from their guardians, who receive no specific training to this end and instead rely on personal experience to prepare the asylum interview. To gain a better understanding of how such an ‘intuitive’ approach to uncovering the asylum narrative may impact disclosure and trust, this paper examines the case of an unaccompanied minor preparing the asylum interview with his guardian. Through interactional analysis of transcribed, audio-recorded data, the article explores the dynamics of truth negotiation, and discusses how mutual understanding is hampered at (1) a semantic, (2) a chronotope (time/space), and (3) a normative level. These three levels of non-understanding affect both the minor’s narrative rights and the relationship of trust with his guardian. Finally, this paper argues that multiple truths (experiential & factual) can co-exist, and discusses the merits of chronotopes as a narrative strategy to reconcile such different perspectives of reality.